Jewish agencies help keep survivors at home

December 16, 2007|By Lois K. Solomon Staff Writer

Flashlights. Dogs. Sirens. Foreign accents. Showers.

The memories, long moved to another part of the mind, are coming back to Holocaust survivors, and they are brutal. This twist on aging is unbearable for many who survived so many years ago in the face of impossible odds.

The Jewish community wants to keep these survivors home in the twilight of their lives. Jewish Family Service agencies in Palm Beach and Broward counties want to give Holocaust survivors in-home nursing care, housekeeping help and anything else they need to stay in their houses or apartments. The goal is to keep them out of nursing homes, where care by uniformed strangers could trigger horrific memories.

Life in a communal facility, where residents may be told to wear identifying tags or line up for meals, can "reawaken memories of the concentration camp experience," said Jaclynn Faffer, executive director of the Ruth Rales Jewish Family Service west of Boca Raton. Faffer and Ken Moskowitz, executive director of the Jewish Family Service of Broward County, consider their efforts to keep survivors home a success so far. But they worry about mounting expenses, such as the growing need for full-time care, that survivors need as they age and their health declines.

About 16,000 survivors live in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties, many of whom have thrived and need no help. The Jewish Family Service sees only a small percentage of the survivors.

Many of the age-related issues survivors battle are faced by every senior citizen: deteriorating health, loss of control, frayed family relationships. But research is showing Holocaust survivors tackle these challenges with a unique assortment of scars etched during their early-life traumas.

"This is something we didn't understand until this group got to old age," said Paula David, coordinator of the Holocaust Research Project at Baycrest Centre, an academic and residential facility focused on aging in Toronto. David has compiled a list of more than 30 interactions that can trigger panic in survivors, such as shining a flashlight, hearing a siren or visiting the dentist.

"They are different in how they respond to care," she said.

Social workers who help needy survivors say they see recurrent problems. Survivors are showing many symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder as they age, including bad dreams, insomnia and thoughts of suicide.

"It comes back to me at night," said Martin Hornung, 85, an Auschwitz survivor who lives in Century Village west of Boca Raton and gets assistance from the Ruth Rales service. "They are very vivid nightmares. I wake up sweating."

In the dreams, Hornung said he is running and falling.

"The older I get, the more it's coming back to me," he said. "My wife is screaming at me. I'm being beaten."

Although he has trouble walking and lost 35 pounds during a bout with colon cancer five years ago, Hornung said he would be miserable in a nursing home and prefers to live on his own. The retired engineer said he has had suicidal thoughts but would not want to hurt his two adult children.

"I don't like hospitals, doctors, people telling me when to get up and eat," said Hornung, who was married for 55 years and nursed his wife, Bertha, through Alzheimer's disease until she died in 2001. "I don't want anyone to touch me. I want as little contact as possible."

Typical reactions to the problems of aging seem exacerbated in Holocaust survivors, said Allen Glicksman, director of research at the Philadelphia Corporation for the Aged, who has investigated issues facing aging survivors.

"The younger survivors had interruptions to their intellectual and emotional development," Glicksman said. "They may feel they finally mastered their environment as adults. But life becomes more difficult as they get frail, and more scary."

Compounding the emotional challenges are physical problems directly linked to their captivity. Studies in Israel have shown female Holocaust survivors are more likely to develop osteoporosis than women who have not been through the trauma. Other studies have shown a higher risk of breast and colon cancer, linked to their weakened immune systems.